Hume on Skepticism Regarding Reason

This chapter is concerned with Hume's sceptical argument against reason and is divided into three parts. The first two deal respectively with the two steps of Hume's sceptical argument. The first of these, which concerns demonstrative reasoning, maintains that because all such reasoning involves an inferential or calculative process by fallible human reasoners, the results, no matter how well confirmed, can never be known with absolute certainty. The second and more radical argument turns on the same fallibility and claims that the iterative examination of the operation of the mind in the inferential process would, if carried on indefinitely, lead by ‘all the rules of logic’, to a ‘total extinction of belief and evidence’. The third part analyzes Hume's naturalistic explanation of why such a result can never occur and his rejection of the dogmatic response to scepticism regarding reason.